There is no way around it. Finding affordable vegan Easter eggs for kids is a challenge.
First of all, it’s a miracle in itself that there are vegan Easter eggs in stores. It is fairly easy to find a chocolate bunny, vegan cream eggs, and even little dark chocolate bunnies at health food stores, but impossible to find anything affordable for kids! One cream egg is around five to six dollars. Imagine buying dozens for an Easter egg hunt?
I was unprepared for this dilemma when I committed to host a vegan Easter egg hunt for my daughter’s Girl Guide group. Lo and behold, I found myself panicking at some non-descript health food centre trying to price crunch seven dollar chocolate bars for 20 children. As a vegan mom though, it is necessary to think quickly in such situations and I opted for the plastic eggs filled with skittles and jujubes (both surprisingly vegan) and non-dairy chocolate chips. The problem was solved, but there was an unexpected twist that forced me to pull out my vegan mommy powers again.
When I hid the eggs outside for the scavenger hunt and nature walk, the slugs took over. I quite literally mean the little slimy bugs that manifested and decided to make their new homes on the cheerful looking plastic eggs. It was ironic that the vegan eggs I’d worked so hard to make were very nearly ruined by an animal. Did the slugs not know I was trying to save them?
When my daughter and the other little girls noticed the slugs, pandemonium erupted with shrill screams and a flurry of little ladies running around panicking. I quickly took the egg with the biggest slug and scooped him onto my finger. I began talking about how amazing he was, how slugs function in the forest and joked about how much they loved Easter eggs. The girls took this in and stopped being afraid of the interesting critter. The vegan eggs turned the nature walk into a very interesting learning experience.
For future egg hunts, I will decidedly abandon buying the eggs all together. Instead, making vegan Easter eggs at home with a mould. Vegan chocolate will be a much cheaper and yummier alternative. Simply takes cocoa, sugar, and other select ingredients depending on what type of eggs you would like and a mould. It is also healthier to make your own eggs because it won’t contain the additives found in mass-produced chocolate.
Be sure to use the weekend to get outside, soak in some rays, and smile because the days of seasonal depression are finally behind us. Just watch out for the slugs!
Happy Easter from everyone at Women’s Post!
